This is our blizzard from space

On Sunday morning, astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted this photo of the aftermath of Jonas, which is a really hard name to take seriously for a violent winter storm, but there you are. Jonas stomped up the eastern seacoast this weekend, and left some towns measuring the snowfall in feet, not inches. (Central Park got nearly two feet, if that helps.)

If you look at the map at that last link, we live east of New Haven, and we figure we got a little more than a foot. The snow started in earnest in the wee hours of Saturday, and didn’t let up until long past bedtime. Right now, you can hear the snowblowers churning and the plows raking up pavement up and down my street.

We took two walks yesterday to our little downtown to see if we could find coffee, or a sandwich, or something, but businesses closed early and we were left with a pretty good workout and we had to eat and drink our own brew.We had Netflix and Amazon Video and stew and I baked cookies and we hunkered down as any good New Englander or Transplant would do.

Still, we kept getting reminders of the storm outside. The house looked like a snow globe and the wind was whipping, and there was a moment when you couldn’t see out my back door, and I realized that — moral of the story alert here — because this state has done so much work on preventing and ending homelessness, we have a lot less people to worry about in this kind of weather.

Because I know people who are homeless, when bad weather hits I don’t think in terms of the monolithic “homeless problem.” I think of the names of people I know who are under bridges and trying to live through the night.

Yes, there are still people out there, but good-hearted and dedicated people are working on that, and those of us who are stuck snug as a bug in a rug during a blizzard can rest assured that very soon, we will be able to do so knowing our fellows are somewhere warm, safe, and dry, too. And that’s pretty cool.